This paper proposes the design and application of an immersive virtual reality system to improve and train the emotional skills of students with autism spectrum disorders. It has been designed for ...primary school students between the ages of 7–12 and all participants have a confirmed diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. The immersive environment allows the student to train and develop different social situations in a structured, visual and continuous manner. The use of a computer vision system to automatically determine the child's emotional state is proposed. This system has been created with two goals in mind, the first to update the social situations, with the student's emotional mood taken into account, and the second to confirm, automatically, if the child's behavior is appropriate in the represented social situation. The results described in this paper show a significant improvement in the children's emotional competences, in comparison with the results obtained until now using earlier virtual reality systems.
•Virtual reality to improve the emotional skills of ASD students.•Immersive virtual reality system to create social situations where the students can practice their emotional responses.•Design and implementation of protocols to evaluate the students' emotional response.•Identify, develop and train appropriate emotional behaviors of ASD students.•Immersive virtual reality system to create social situations to improve their emotional skills.
Numerous studies have highlighted the crucial role of teacher-child relationships in children's self-regulation and social-emotional skills. However, whether teacher-child relationship profiles are ...linked to self-regulation and social-emotional skills remains unclear. The present study employed multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) to explore the teacher-child relationship profiles and their associations with self-regulation and social-emotional skills at both the child and class levels. Utilizing data from 584 children nested in 42 preschool classes, single-level LPA unveiled three teacher-child relationship profiles associated with different self-regulation and social-emotional skills. Notably, closeness and conflict emerged as significant factors in profile assignments. Children with low closeness and high conflict tended to experience challenges in self-regulation and social-emotional skills, whereas those with moderate to high closeness reported better outcomes. Furthermore, MLPA identified three class profiles based on the prevalence of children's profiles and their relationships with different class-mean self-regulation and social-emotional skills. Children's age, gender, and teachers' teaching experience were identified as factors related to child- and class-level profiles. These findings emphasize the interplay between teacher-child relationship profiles and classroom dynamics in relation to children's self-regulation and social-emotional skills within a Chinese cultural context.
•Three teacher-child relationship profiles were identified at child (Conflict, Mild, Flexible profiles) and class level (Stable, Warm, Mixed).•Closeness and conflict determined child-level profile assignment, with closeness predicting self-regulation and social-emotional skills.•Significant differences in mean self-regulation and social-emotional skills at class-level were observed only between Warm and Stable profiles.•Child age and gender were associated with child level profiles, while teaching experience was related to class-level profiles.
Social engagement skills as capacities for active interpersonal engagement are thought to conceptually differ from behavioral and motivational tendencies and to predict learning and life outcomes. We ...tested these assumptions on the distinct nature and relevance of social engagement skills. Quota-representative self-reports from 6987 adults in six countries showed strong relations of social engagement skills with personality facets and weaker with vocational interests. Partially supporting their distinctiveness, social engagement skills were not fully reducible to those correlates. Skills predicted self-reported learning, quality-of-life, and job outcomes, but offered little incremental validity beyond personality and interests. Results largely generalized across countries. Yet, the complex interplay between social engagement skills, individual differences, and outcomes demonstrated cross-country variations, suggesting sensitivity to sociocontextual factors. We conclude that while social engagement skills conceptually differ from personality and interests and in themselves predict life success, they add limited empirical value beyond these constructs, at least for self-reports.
Social engagement skills are the capacities to actively engage with others. It is thought that these capacities differ from other person characteristics (e.g., behavioral or motivational tendencies), and that this distinction matters for explaining life success. Our study showed that while self-reported social engagement skills shared similarities with other person characteristics, they still had unique aspects. Moreover, social engagement skills mattered, such that more skilled adults reported higher quality-of-life, but not necessarily better learning. However, social engagement skills did not provide much extra insight into life success beyond what was already known from other person characteristics. Other than the remaining results, these complex relations between social engagement skills, person characteristics, and life success largely varied across countries. The results highlight the importance of assessing social skills in a situation-specific manner, which will be imperative for targeted educational practices in the future. Moreover, our study focused on adults, limiting applicability to youth, but results suggest that intervention efforts targeting social engagement skills may probably yield more interpersonal than academic benefits. Finally, when designing or adapting complex educational programs, practitioners should consider sociocontextual factors.
•We studied the nature and relevance of social engagement skills with self-reports from 7000 adults across six countries.•Social engagement skills strongly correlate with personality facets and vocational interests, but unique aspects remain.•Social engagement skills predict learning and life success.•Self-reported social engagement skills add little information beyond personality facets and vocational interests for predicting life success.
This longitudinal study investigated to what extent five key social-emotional skills persistence, academic buoyancy, curiosity, social engagement, and lack of loneliness were associated with ...adolescents' school engagement and burnout at two timepoints. Furthermore, the role of gender and socioeconomic status were examined. The data were collected from 1021 adolescents (ages 12–14) in the fall of 2021 and 2022. The results were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and revealed that, in general, social-emotional skills were associated with higher school engagement and lower burnout among adolescents. Curiosity showed a strong relationship with school engagement. Moreover, persistence was associated with an increase in school engagement among adolescents with low-average socioeconomic status. High academic buoyancy and lack of loneliness were associated with decrease in burnout over the school years. The study implies that recognizing the variety of adolescent's social-emotional skills may help to better support adolescents' school engagement and protect them from burnout.
According to the study findings, social-emotional skills, such as persistence and curiosity, were associated with higher school motivation and lower burnout of adolescents. These results suggest that interventions aiming to develop adolescents' social-emotional skills may promote adolescents' motivation. Supporting adolescents' social relationships in school may also protect adolescents from burning out. To better support adolescent students' motivation and well-being at school it is important to recognize the diversity of individual adolescents' needs and strengths in social-emotional skills. Therefore, sufficient education and training would be needed for teachers concerning the variety of social-emotional skills.
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•Higher social-emotional skills were associated with higher school engagement and lower burnout.•Adolescents with low academic buoyancy and high loneliness reported increases in school burnout.•The role of persistence was highlighted among adolescents with lower socioeconomic status.
Teachers are often called upon to identify students at behavioral and emotional risk by completing a variety of assessment tools. However, many teachers may lack the requisite skills to reliably ...identify students at risk or use data derived from assessment tools to inform intervention. A series of trainings was developed to improve decision making on the Intervention Selection Profile-Social Skills, with a focus on improving accuracy and use of data. Specifically, a two-study randomized controlled design was employed to evaluate the efficacy of a basic informational training and a training with a practice component with regards to a control condition on the collection and use of social-emotional assessment data on the ISP-SS. Results suggest limited influence of training on the accuracy of data collection, yet significant influence on improving how data are used to inform intervention. Implications for practice and research, as well as limitations, are discussed.
Introduction The present study investigated whether social–emotional skills in first year college students differed before and after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdowns. Methods Participants ...( N = 1,685) consisted of first year college students (mean age 18.53 years) selected from a broader cohort enrolled in a longitudinal study on college mental health at liberal arts colleges in the United States. In a cohort-sequential design, participants completed an online survey assessing social–emotional skills in January of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022. Using analysis of covariance, we examined mean differences in social–emotional skills between students who were first years before (January 2018–2020) and after the lockdowns (January 2022), controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results The post-lockdown group scored significantly lower on emotional control and expressivity and marginally higher on social sensitivity compared to the pre-lockdown group. No group differences in social/emotional expressivity or social control were detected. Discussion These findings indicate that the COVID-19 lockdowns impaired some, but not all, social–emotional skills in first year college students. Addressing social–emotional skills in college may help to reduce the COVID-19 mental health burden.
•Adolescents are significant informants on teaching social-emotional skills.•Low-achieving adolescent students perceived daily school life interactions as manageable.•Strategies for managing school ...life interactions reflect skills often targeted in SEL programs.•Severe interaction problems challenged students’ problem-solving strategies.•Implementing SEL program requires noticing students’ perceptions of their interactions.
Social and Emotional Learning programs, designed to enhance adolescents’ social and emotional skills, are implemented in schools worldwide. One of these programs is Skills4Life (S4L), for students in Dutch secondary education. To strengthen this program and adapt it to students’ needs, we conducted an exploratory study on their perspectives on their own social-emotional development, focusing on low-achieving students in prevocational education.
We interviewed eleven boys and eleven girls in five focus groups on (1) their general school life experiences, (2) their perceptions and experiences regarding interactions with peers, the problems they encountered in these interactions, and (3) the strategies and skills they used to solve these problems. Driven by findings in related studies initial thematic analyzes were extended using a three-step approach: an inductive, data-driven process of open coding; axial coding; and selective coding, using the social-emotional skills comprised in an often-used SEL framework as sensitizing concepts.
Overall, students were satisfied with their relationships with classmates and teachers and their ability to manage their daily interaction struggles. Their reflections on their interactions indicate that the skills they preferred to use mirror the social-emotional skills taught in many school programs. However, they also indicated that they did not apply these skills in situations they experienced as unsafe and uncontrollable, e.g., bullying and harassment. The insights into adolescents’ social-emotional skills perceptions and the problems they encountered with peers at school presented here can contribute to customizing school-based skills enhancement programs to their needs. Teacher training is required to help teachers gain insight into students’ perspectives and to use this insight to implement SEL programs tailored to their needs.
Childhood is an important stage for socio-emotional development. Understanding the associations of lifestyle habits with the healthy development of social and emotional skills is crucial for better ...interventions early in life. This study aims to analyze the association between sleep and socio-emotional development in toddlers aged 12 to 36 months and examine whether weight mediated these associations.
This study is part of a cluster randomized controlled trial developed in Portuguese childcare centers. A sample of 344 children (176 females) enrolled in the study. Participants' anthropometrics were measured while at childcare centers using standardized procedures. Body mass index (BMI) was computed as the body weight/height2 (kg/m2) ratio. Sleep quality was collected with the Tayside Children's Sleep Questionnaire, a 10-item scale that evaluates the child's ability to initiate and maintain sleep. Two additional questions regarding sleep duration were added. Parental questionnaires assessed the child's sex and date of birth, socioeconomic status, and total energy intake (TEI). Motor (fine and gross) was assessed using Bayley-III scales and socio-emotional (SE) by the Greenspan Social-Emotional Growth Chart questionnaire. Linear regression models were used to examine the associations between sleep (duration and quality) and SE with adjustments for sex, age, BMI, mothers' education, motor development, and TEI. Mediation analysis was conducted using path analysis.
SE development was significantly associated with nighttime sleep duration even when adjusted for confounders (β = 0.223; 95% CI: 0.001, 0.004 and β = 0.168; 0.0003, 0.003; respectively). Sleep quality was not significantly associated with SE development, and the weight did not explain the associations between sleep and SE development.
This study supports that sleep duration is directly associated with SE development in toddlers. From a public health perspective, sleep duration should be prioritized in intervention programs to improve socio-emotional development early in life.
The development and promotion of social-emotional skills in childhood and adolescence contributes to subsequent well-being and positive life outcomes. However, the assessment of these skills is ...associated with conceptual and methodological challenges. This review discusses how social-emotional skill measurement in youth could be improved in terms of skills' conceptualization and classification, and in terms of assessment techniques and methodologies. The first part of the review discusses various conceptualizations of social-emotional skills, demonstrates their overlap with related constructs such as emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality dimensions, and proposes an integrative set of social-emotional skill domains that has been developed recently. Next, methodological approaches that are innovative and may improve social-emotional assessments are presented, illustrated by concrete examples. We discuss how these innovations could advance social-emotional assessments, and demonstrate links to similar issues in related fields. We conclude the review by providing several concrete assessment recommendations that follow from this discussion.
Public Significance Statement
This review discusses how the conceptualization and assessment of social-emotional skills could be advanced to improve child and youth well-being. After presenting various social-emotional frameworks and reviewing methodological approaches that may improve or innovate social-emotional assessments, five concrete recommendations that may guide further research and practice are provided.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
There are well-established benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for children within educational contexts. Combining social–emotional skills and compassion abilities has been ...seldomly done, and it may be valuable at individual and societal levels, for resilient, empathetic, and inclusive societies. This study explored the feasibility and efficacy of a program designed to promote socioemotional and compassion skills in children attending the 3rd and 4th grades, by using in-class dynamics complemented with serious games. This program, named “The Me and the Us of Emotions,” is part of the Gulbenkian Knowledge Academies 2020 and consists of 10 group sessions embedded in the school curriculum. Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial design, school classes were allocated to intervention (classes,
n
= 8; children,
n
= 163) and control groups (classes,
n
= 6; children,
n
= 132). During the program, facilitators assessed adherence to the sessions’ plan, attendance, dosage (i.e., how many sessions were delivered), and participant responsiveness. Children completed self-report measures of social–emotional skills and emotional climate at pre-, post-intervention, 3-month, and 6-month follow-ups. Results indicate that the program is feasible, with high adherence, high attendance rate, and participant responsiveness. Results also indicate empathy, soothing, and drive feelings to change from pre-intervention to all other assessment moments, for the intervention group only. Moreover, cooperation and threat changed over time for participants in both the control and the intervention groups. The current study offers empirical support for the feasibility and utility of a compassion-based social–emotional learning program on promoting children’s empathy, and emotions of soothing and vitality in the school context. Thus, these findings contribute to recent research on the potential added value of compassion practices within an SEL program.
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